Nginx reverse proxying websockets

Question

Is there a way to compile nginx to handle reverse proxying websockets requests? I'm building a realtime app in Node.JS and need a web server on top of this. Everything I've read says Nginx cannot reverse proxy websockets requests, so I'm a little confused on how I should approach this problem.

I was thinking about just implementing all server logic in Node, but there are some problems with this approach

1) PHP - I need a way to serve PHP files 2) Static files - I really like that nginx is very fast for static files. There are some modules for this, though, so this problem isn't too big. 3) When I need to update my Node app, I would like to be able to restart that part separately from the main server. Also, if the Node app crashes for some reason, I don't want the whole web server to go down!

Answer 1

The simplest solution would be to setup virtual hosts in nginx for multiple subdomains and run each service on a separate one. That way you don't have to worry about distinguishing websockets requests from standard http requests on the same port.

Also, you can run php behind nginx using PHP-FPM but that's quite a challenge to get working, and for that reason Apache may be a better choice.

Answer 2

I am doing something similar, here is the nginx server config( file: MY_DOMAIN.tk.conf on: /etc/nginx/config.d/) that work for me, with:

• let's encrypt tls cert for ssl
• php7.2 reverse proxy

• nodejs reverse proxy for websockets server running on port 8000.

   map $http_upgrade $connection_upgrade { default upgrade; '' close; } upstream appserver { server localhost:8000; # appserver_ip:ws_port } server { server_name MY_DOMAIN.tk; root /var/www/html; index index.php; location /ws { proxy_pass http://appserver; proxy_http_version 1.1; proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade; proxy_set_header Connection $connection_upgrade; } location / { try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$args; } location ~ \\.php$ { include snippets/fastcgi-php.conf; fastcgi_pass unix:/run/php/php7.2-fpm.sock; } client_max_body_size 128m; # add_header Strict-Transport-Security "max-age=15768000" always; listen 443 ssl; # managed by Certbot ssl_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/live/MY_DOMAIN.tk/fullchain.pem; # managed by Certbot ssl_certificate_key /etc/letsencrypt/live/MY_DOMAIN.tk/privkey.pem; # managed by Certbot include /etc/letsencrypt/options-ssl-nginx.conf; # managed by Certbot ssl_dhparam /etc/letsencrypt/ssl-dhparams.pem; # managed by Certbot } server { if ($host = MY_DOMAIN.tk) { return 301 https://$host$request_uri; } # managed by Certbot server_name MY_DOMAIN.tk; listen 80; return 404; # managed by Certbot } 

by doing this then you can conect to wss://MY_DOMAIN.tk/ws